digital copies

[dannyday5821]

in theory - if i copy a jpeg photo a thousand... or a milion times... will its quality eventually degrade?

im just curious - like a video tape loses quality as its copied over and over again does the same happen with digital files? abit like if you scanned a photo, then scanned the printed scan of the photo and so on and so on and so on...

[Buenchico]

See here:
http://graphicssoft.a.../a/jpegmythsfacts.htm

Chris

[wildwood]

Copying an image file a million times will not result in the loss of quality, see Chris' link. But I dare say that if you print the image out and rescan it you would lose some quality.

[VHG]

I have certainly had situatiojns where I have opened a jpeg to look at it, then SAVED it, and the file size is different. Even just rotating a JPEG can change the file size.

This may well be down to the image editir that is used, and the compression settings.

But I ALWAYS save a copy of all my digital photos in a safe place BEFORE I edit them or look at them (and hence rotate them), so I always have the untouched "masters" if I ever want them.